Getting Steve Jobs Wrong
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Getting Steve Jobs Wrong
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Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong
#2I've been criticizing Gruber more often than not, but I found this one to be a to the point, fairly balanced piece - especially around the visionary vs. tweaker vs. inventor part.
But his gripe about the Jobs' biography still doesn't make enough sense to me, particularly this part -
What it was that Jobs actually did is much of the mystery of his life and his work, and Isaacson, frustratingly, had seemingly little interest in that, or any recognition that there even was any sort of mystery as to just what Jobs’s gifts really were.
I attribute that to personality traits, intuition, timing, persistence, character and may be some other intangibles that we don't yet fathom. It's not one single tangible thing that you can point to and say - hey this is it, if you do it this way you can be another Steve Jobs, another Einstein, another Picasso etc. It's more like art than science - you can't really nail it down, pin point it, list it - it's certain basic elements of the art mostly covered with the artist's expression ability, personality, imagination, composition et.al and that's not really something that a biographer can resolve in a biography. Biographer's job is to lay out the life and work of the person and let people make their own inferences of the subtleties, of where it worked, why and why not. Some will "get" it, many won't. Some will be able to apply it in many nondescript ways and many won't have any use of it.
Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong
#3I've been criticizing Gruber more often than not, but I found this one to be a to the point, fairly balanced piece - especially around the visionary vs. tweaker vs. inventor part. But his gripe about the Jobs' biography still doesn't make enough sense to me, particularly this part - What it was that Jobs actually did is much of the mystery of his life and his work, and Isaacson, frustratingly, had seemingly little in…
> I've been criticizing Gruber more often than not, but I found this one to be a to the point, fairly balanced piece - especially around the visionary vs. tweaker vs. inventor part.
I as well. And I like Gladwell, I just think he and Isaacson have seriously misrepresented Steve Jobs and what he did in his life & at Apple.
Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong
#4Another great take on the extent to which Walter Isaacson biography misses the mark is John Siracusa's criticisms on the "Hypercritical" podcast. Skip to about 17 minutes and 45 seconds in, which is when they start discussing it. It looks to be part 1 of an epic two-fer.
Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong
#5That photograph where Jobs displays the pre-iPhone phones really doesn't prove anything. The Palm Pilot didn't have a keyboard, and it was an obvious idea to eventually give it calling capabilities (incidentally, my "omg this can't be true, I have been waiting for this all my life" was when I saw the first ad for a Palm Pilot, not for an iPhone). Trust in the big vendors to screw it up anyway, but still. It's not as if nobody besides Job had the capability of envisioning a phone without a keyboard.
Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong
#6Jobs was a visionary and a tweaker, an artistic/design idealist, and a businessman. he strove for subjective perfection, but ultimately shipped product and charged for it. there is no conflict here. because he was all of these things is a big reason why he accomplished so much and became a billionaire.
Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong
#7That photograph where Jobs displays the pre-iPhone phones really doesn't prove anything. The Palm Pilot didn't have a keyboard, and it was an obvious idea to eventually give it calling capabilities (incidentally, my "omg this can't be true, I have been waiting for this all my life" was when I saw the first ad for a Palm Pilot, not for an iPhone). Trust in the big vendors to screw it up anyway, but still. It's not as…
I asked an interesting question here, why the Palm Pilot (and Newton) didn't originally ship with a hardware keyboard. It's fascinating to me that devices originally used handwriting recognition, then moved to physical keyboards, then to on-screen keyboards.
http://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-Apple-Newton-and-Palm-Pilot...
Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong
#8Theories on Jobs' character aside, the Jobs biography is an utter mess. Some sentences feel like they were pulled from a 6th grade book report. It's riddled with obvious statements and reads like it should have been published in People magazine. I realize I'm probably being too harsh, but I wish that I felt like Isaacson had invested into this biography, this once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity, the way Jobs likely invested in developing any of his products.
Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong
#9Jobs was no Edison or Einstein. Hopper, Ritchie, Turing, and even Gates contributed more to our collective future...
Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong
#10Theories on Jobs' character aside, the Jobs biography is an utter mess. Some sentences feel like they were pulled from a 6th grade book report. It's riddled with obvious statements and reads like it should have been published in People magazine. I realize I'm probably being too harsh, but I wish that I felt like Isaacson had invested into this biography, this once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity, the way Jobs likely invest…
Well, it was a rapidly published cash-in effort. The book industry puts out tons of titles that have no enduring value but are keyed into a very specific marketing opportunity. You don't get paid when someone finishes a book, after all -- all they have to do is buy it.
When there's a big cultural and news event, it's a huge marketing opportunity, and timeliness trumps other considerations. Because we live in a very fast and competitive media environment, this dynamic plays a very big role.